When I was first awakening to questions about the nature of existence, I encountered a poem about the pondering of the origin of creation, the Nasadiya Sukta ("Not the non-existent"), the 129th hymn of the 10th mandala of the Indian (Hindi) Rigveda, translated into English to mean "Hymn of Creation". What is central to the key point of this article is that the Hymn of Creation was written around 3500 years ago, key because it reveals the truth that although he continues to try with fierce dedication, man is no closer to solving the riddle of existence than he did in ancient times. Here is the poem in its entirety, translation by Arthur Llewellyn Basham, 1954 (the final stanza being the inspiration for this post):

Then even non-existence was not there, nor existence,
There was no air then, nor the space beyond it.
What covered it? Where was it? In whose keeping?
Was there then cosmic fluid, in depths unfathomed?

Then there was neither death nor immortality
nor was there then the torch of night and day.
The One breathed windlessly and self-sustaining.
There was that One then, and there was no other.

At first there was only darkness wrapped in darkness.
All this was only unillumined cosmic water.
That One which came to be, enclosed in nothing,
arose at last, born of the power of heat.

In the beginning desire descended on it -
that was the primal seed, born of the mind.
The sages who have searched their hearts with wisdom
know that which is, is kin to that which is not.

And they have stretched their cord across the void,
and know what was above, and what below.
Seminal powers made fertile mighty forces.
Below was strength, and over it was impulse.

But, after all, who knows, and who can say
Whence it all came, and how creation happened?
the gods themselves are later than creation,
so who knows truly whence it has arisen?

Whence all creation had its origin,
the creator, whether he fashioned it or whether he did not,
the creator, who surveys it all from highest heaven,
he knows — or maybe even he does not know.

Oh, the frustrating treachery of it all! To seek for the reason or explanation for existence, perhaps for all of one's life up until that point only to find that the highest of the High, the One who should know isn’t telling. So it is here, of the silence of the Father, of the One, of the Invisible, of the Transcendent that I present my wisdom of the forming of the Wisdom Heart:

Oh, the heaviness of not knowing the why of me,
the why of Him - my heart bursted to be healed of this ignorance
so I could be cured everlasting of doubt and of fear
and of the hundreds of forms that arouse of this darkness
each and every day I greeted my world.

I asked, is this doubt God's doubt too? Is this fear God's fear too?
No answer came that satisfied my quest for absolute truth
so I was left to form my personal God of One
of its healing of the formation of the illusion of two, my God of
Self-Forgiveness and Self-Reconciliation,
my God of Self-Love.

In Self-Forgiveness and Love I walk, knowing that
scientists strive and politicians struggle and poets beseech
but none can penetrate God's silence.
It seems the world could use the healing wisdom
of the 129th hymn of the 10 mandala of the Rigveda.
And so I bring it forth.